The Piano Lessons
by Sherloqued
Summary: In the mid-19th century, music teacher and pianist Janet Morrison arrives to the South Island, New Zealand for an arranged marriage - but instead finds love with another. Characters: Marston/OC
1. Chapter 1

I. The Arrival

The morning of 24 November 1856

She and their belongings are delivered as ceremoniously as possible under the circumstances. She is a little unsteady on her feet; dazed and a little queasy from the long and arduous sea journey from Port Glasgow to New Zealand, the Clipper route, crossing the equator at Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, to its destination of Blind Bay, or Te Tai-o-Aorere in the indigenous language; and she is helped down to the ship's tender to be taken ashore by the British ship's crew, and then carried on their shoulders as if on a palanquin, set down gently on the beach as if she were a delicate, fragile thing. The ship is named the _Aventurine_.

It has been nearly three months; eighty-five days, and the voyage has been a marvel, with whale sightings, Fitzroy's dolphins leaping through the waves created by the ship's bow as she pitches through the water, or in its aquamarine wake, and the cries of innumerable seabirds as they approach land, the ports of call. She writes of it daily, in letters and in a journal. Her many boxes and trunks have been all laid out on the beach, and her piano is in a crate stenciled with her name and destination.

This new place is frightening, but impossibly beautiful. The sea and land are powerful and unspoiled, the mountains and rocky cliffs sheer and green, draped in mist. The surf rolls and booms all around them.

The ship's captain asks her if she is sure; they could take her directly on to the settlement of Nelson with some of the other passengers, but she tells him no, thank you; she prefers to wait for her husband-to-be to come and collect her right there, as arranged. It appears he has been delayed by weather. She has to speak up loudly to be heard over the roar of the surf and wind. He looks at her in disbelief, shaking his head; but agrees.

It was an engagement, of a sort. She and her husband-to-be have only ever seen each other in daguerreotype photographs. Her daughter is illegitimate, and he has agreed to accept them both. She can only guess that her father may well have wanted to be rid of his problem daughter and her disregard for societal conventions elsewhere. But she is not ashamed of anything she has done, or that she has loved. But all of that is in the past now and she intends to look forward.

He arrives with a procession of men, women and children to greet her; some his hired hands from the mine, some are indigenous Māori, to help carry her belongings up to the house. She smiles; how lovely. He looks at her. She feels as though she is being appraised, as livestock, chattel - and perhaps found wanting. She then hears him speak with one of the men, a man whom he calls Marston, who answers him in what she recognizes as a soft Scottish burr.

She worries that the tide will be coming in farther soon and that her piano will be damaged, swept away.

"I'm sure she must be tired after such a long journey." Marston says, gruff, and the group heads for the crates and boxes.

"Please, be careful with it!" She can hear the tightness in her voice, the desperation.

"Mr. Marston!"


	2. Chapter 2

The rain poured down. Janet worried over the fate of her piano, but still breathed in the pleasant smell of rain on earth. It had been decided to leave the piano, but not by her, farther up on the beach, elevated on blocks, until the weather permitted moving it, because of the danger of the slippage of the mud on the long trek to the house. She did not know when that would be. It continued to rain. She should be planning her wedding, but her thoughts are with her piano. It was her voice, her means of creative expression, the link to her daughter's father, her solace - and she would be lost without it.

All of her other belongings had already been delivered - the children, thinking the entire thing a lark, were allowed to carry small, light things such as lampshades and hat boxes, as they excitedly clamoured to take part and help, but for every one else it was hard work.

She thought she might enlist Mr. Marston's help, and she and her daughter Grace make the muddy trek to his house, through a grove of tree ferns, called _whekī_ ; and where occasional, unsteady planks and boards are the means for crossing over the ground, sodden from days of rain. From somewhere far away, she hears the ringing, whistling song of a solitary bellbird echoing through the trees. A dog barks from the porch of the thatched-roof cabin; alerting his master to visitors, or trespassers. The foundation of the dwelling was raised on stump posts. She had learned that Mr. Marston was the small settlement's blacksmith.

When he answered the door, he looks at them as though they were not welcome. Cautiously, he lets them in, and Grace rushes to the piano, now standing in a corner of the room. The child sat down and immediately started banging on the keys.

"Gracie!" her mother gently admonished her. "It will need to be tuned!" She thought of all the damage it must have sustained on the trip. At least it was finally safe and dry. And she needed to give some thought to finding an appropriate place for a studio for her teaching, piano and voice. Perhaps the school, church or community center would be available.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Marston, but we have come about the piano. This is my daughter, Gracie."

Her daughter's actual name was Charis, from the Greek, meaning grace - but everyone called her the name in English, the affectionate Gracie.

But instead of the jarring, discordant sounds she expected, it sounded fine when her daughter played a simple scale; pitch perfect, as her fingers pressed down along the keys of the C major scale. She sat down at the piano next to her daughter, and played a few chords.

"I had it tuned for ye." he quietly said. She was surprised, and a little embarrassed, that she had prejudged him, assuming him to be uncultured and boorish.

"Well . . . that was very kind of you." she stammered. "Thank you."

"Seònaid," he then said to her. "Your name in Gaelic. Did ye know that." He did not seem to be a man who smiled much, and one side of his face she could now see was horribly scarred, burned.

 _Yes,_ she thought. It had been her mother's middle name too. From near Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis and Harris. It had always sounded like "Shawnet" to her, when she had heard her grandmother call her and her mother by that name.

"I thank you, and good day to you, sir."

She and her fiancé could arrange for the piano to be moved from here.


	3. Chapter 3

"Nae, I cannae do it. I haven't the time. Now go 'way, woman."

This was the third time she had come about the piano; she must have thought she could win some extra sympathy from a fellow countryman Scot, but he would not give it.

But what a sorry sight they made, the two of them. Bedraggled from the rain and huddled under a dripping umbrella, firmly planted on the bench on his front porch, refusing to leave until she had an answer, or the answer she wanted.

But eventually he relented.

"Come again when it stops raining." he'd said.

And as soon as the next sunny morning, she arrived at his house, her daughter in tow. They made the journey to the beach together, and she had him prise off the board covering the keys with the crowbar he had brought with him, and sampling a few keys, she put her ear to the small open space of the crate, as if listening to someone speaking faintly, or for the ocean in a seashell; and she began playing almost immediately, an elaborate piece, turbulent, as if separated from someone long lost. She played frantically, madly. And then as she relaxed, weaving into the music, her eyes closed, the expression on her face as if she were in another world. One might even call her beautiful. The wee lassie played by the water's edge, collecting seashells and singing to herself.

He paced along the beach, considering, and then back to the piano as she played. She played so beautifully, and with such expressiveness and passion - it was almost as if she became a different woman. He missed the company of a woman, he realized. He'd a wife back in England, but she had gone her own way eventually, and he had come here alone.

Her daughter ran up and sat beside her, and then they played together a simple folk melody, singing and laughing. She had brought a small wicker hamper with a boxed lunch for them to eat, which they shared with him.

He had become completely immersed in the music himself - and before long, he realized they had spent almost the entire day at the beach, and it was just before sunset when they left.

"We'd best go back before it gets dark," he reminded them, while they could still see their way.

* * *

"You have it? What do you mean, _you_ have it? It is mine!" she railed at him. When she spoke, nobody ever seemed to hear her, or listen to her. Why had no one asked her first?

"I propose an arrangement, if ye agree. Ye can keep the piano here - I'll keep it safe for ye. In exchange for lessons. Ye play and sing so beautifully."

"I'm to be married." she said, and as she said it, her hand brushed absently, almost lovingly, over the piano's fallboard after she closed it, a far-off expression to her face. He had the distinct impression that in that brief moment, whoever it was she was thinking of was not the man she was about to marry.

And she abruptly turned and strode out of the cabin. He watched as they made their way over the boards, the daughter helping her mother gather her skirts to keep them out of the mud, as if she were carrying her train.

 _I'll have a song from ye yet,_ he thought.


	4. Chapter 4

_Listen...the background strings are the wind; and the rolling piano notes, stronger, are the sea."_

* * *

John Alasdair Marston could hardly remember the last time he'd set foot in a church; but he would today. He'd scrubbed his sooty hands red in the washbasin, shaved and dressed in clean shirt and trousers, a waistcoat and jacket, and combed his hair in a pedestal shaving-glass, the silver beginning to discolor around the edges from the damp. He studied his hazy reflection for a moment. He knew that some of the townspeople would wonder why he'd suddenly found religion and music, and there might even be a few snickers. Some might even wonder, and he knew it wouldn't take long, if he'd taken a fancy to the church's new choir director, Miss Janet Morrison. And maybe he had; but he was a bit rusty and out of practice, if indeed he ever had been.

He saddled his horse and they made their way over the muddy slough into town.

* * *

She was there, with her fiancé and daughter, and after removing his hat and nodding his head in acknowledgement of them and a few other people he knew as he entered the church , he sat in the next pew. She was wearing a dress of a deep wine colour, and a bonnet with matching ribbons, soft and pretty and less severe-looking than the mourning black that she usually wore.

And as he stood and sang the Doxology after the opening prayer, the _Old Hundredth_ , people were surprised at the deep richness of his voice, how nicely he sang. He was surprised that he remembered it.


	5. Chapter 5

After the closing hymn and benediction, he even stayed for after services tea and coffee in the fellowship hall. He caught up with her at the buffet, and a church volunteer and the pastor's wife poured them each a cup of tea from a kettle atop a silver tea samovar. She took a plate from those neatly arranged at the head of the table, and a hemstitched, starched white linen napkin.

The cups and saucers, plates and silver were a hotchpotch assemblage of different, mismatched patterns, some likely donated too, and she smiled at the lovely charm of them, choosing two lemon cakes with the ornate silver pastry tongs from the array of tea sandwiches and cakes on one of the tiered stands; sugar and a dash of cream for her tea. He chose two plain scones, with a good heaping each of strawberry preserves and clotted cream.

She could hear the pastor's Chickering & Sons upright piano being played in the music room, someone meandering through Bach's _Well-Tempered Clavier, Prelude No. 1 in C Major_ , one of her favourites and a piece that had a special meaning for her, and that was so beautifully expressive; he'd had the piano shipped all the way from Boston. During her first piano recital, she remembered, she had gotten a little lost in her meander due to a case of stage fright, and had played the same series of notes over again, circling around twice, until she could regain her composure enough to finish the piece.

"Must I learn to play for recitals?" her younger self had asked her music teacher one day, discouraged.

"Music is a gift, to be shared. And you recovered very nicely, I should say." her teacher kindly reminded her, and she gave Janet's forearm a little squeeze for reassurance. And the more she practiced, the easier it became, although she would always have a touch of that nervous excitement before a performance. She smiled at the memory.

* * *

"Marston," her fiancé nodded in acknowledgement of him before going off to socialize with a few others he knew. Gracie took a biscuit, and then ran off to play with some of the other children.

"Mr. Marston." She said hello to him.

"Miss Morrison."

They sat together, talking in pleasantries, the recent spell of welcome fine weather. There was the soft clattering sound of porcelain teacups and spoons on saucers, or perhaps it was because her hands trembled slightly, or his.

Before he could say anything about it, she said: "I have given some thought to your suggestion about the piano, Mr. Marston. I would be happy to teach you; that is, if you are serious about learning."

"Aye, I am, quite serious." he told her.

He had expected that she would be skeptical. He'd had lessons as a young lad, but never able to keep up with them, as his family was too poor to continue with his interest, and then he went straight into work at twelve years old, and his apprenticeship as a blacksmith, his physical strength and strong hands given for a more practical, useful purpose. But it wasn't that he didn't love his work, fire and the changing of raw metal into something new had always fascinated him. And this skill had saved his arse in that it allowed for him to have his sentence commuted if he would agree to come here to work in the colony. And then, after the time was up, a chance to start afresh, with the slate clean, a pardon.

"My daughter will be at her lessons at school most days until afternoon, so perhaps we can arrange something then, once a week shall we say?, and work out the particulars."

She offered him her hand and he took it, sealing their agreement; she was close enough to notice a brief, pleasant scent, sandalwood?, a trace of his shaving soap, perhaps. _He does clean up rather nicely, I'll say that for 'im_ , she thought.

"Mummy, can we go home now, please?"

Gracie was becoming tired and anxious to go home, fidgeting and tugging at her mother's sleeve.

"Sorry, I must go." she said, smiling. He stood as she rose to leave, and he noticed that she came up to about his shoulder in height. He'd never noticed before.

"Come by on the morrow then?" he asked.

"We'll see." she said, and she and her daughter and fiancé left.

* * *

"Good day, Janet." Mr. Edward Ferguson said to her, and kissed her hand later that morning, when they reached the front door of the boarding house where she and Gracie were staying.

"Good day, Mr. … Edward." _She ought to be calling him by his first name now, she thought,_ and she realized that she did not really know her fiancé at all.


End file.
